Apple is celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day by announcing new accessibility features coming to its platforms later this year.
Assistive Access
Assistive Access is designed to help people with cognitive disabilities by simplifying app's interface to its essential features and removing cognitive load. This feature targets iPhone and iPad specifically.
It is not fully clear, if applications will be able to detect presence of Assistive Access mode and adjust their interface, however, at this point it seems to be reasonable to have similar option for complicated apps.
Live Speech and Personal Voice
Live Speech provides an option for people to type the text to have it spoken out loud during phone calls or live conversations. Frequently used phrases could be saved for quick access.
Users who are at risk of loosing their ability to speak could create Personalized Voice by reading phrases for 15 minutes. This voice could be used to read phrases via Live Speech.
Detection Mode in Magnifier
Magnifier now supports pointing to objects with finger to announce the object. Demo shows button text announcement on microwave oven. This feature significantly improves magnifier app for visually impaired people.
Several other features are added across Apple platforms that improve overall accessibility.
Apple Newsroom: Apple previews Live Speech, Personal Voice, and more new accessibility features